We don’t need Vanilla servers. We need new content built on Vanilla philosophy.
Expansion by expansion, the WoW team has made decisions that were reasonable in the moment but have compounded other problems.
The downside that would eventually become apparent was that when you don’t have to do anything, it no longer matters whether you do anything. The patch rolls around and the old raid is finished fait accompli, like a little pantomime in a cuckoo clock.
This wasn’t immediately clear until the other shoe dropped: catch-up gear. Finding geared recruits was a big problem in the later days of both Vanilla and BC, so its not unreasonable that something was done. The problem was that it was done with the same philosophy as was applied to attunements, which was essentially: everything but the latest tier is dead. Don’t bother progressing — just grind points in the most accessible content. This paradigm was honed to a point when the Trial of the Crusader arrived before the mass of mid-core raiders had even killed Yogg-Saron.
The number one cause of declining subs has been the content droughts between expansions. The only time this wasn’t a problem was at the ends of Vanilla and BC. World-first guilds may have had a different experience, but everyone I knew in Naxx or Sunwell was racing against the expansion, not waiting for it.
And this is my favourite quote of the lot
The most damaging thing to WoW has been to get everyone moving up a tier in lockstep with every patch.
this is kinda silly reasoning though, imo
like, if you look at the graph of subs vs. time that everyone likes to always post, what you'll see is a peak during wrath and a steady decline from there, punctuated by spikes are the start of every expansion. You can conclude on that basis that what people have always really wanted is the BC model, warts and all... or you can conclude that the game's just old and most of its potential players have at some point tried it and since lost interest.
I also don't buy that it's some kind of problem that people move up to the current raid when it actually releases (also the 'most damaging' thing was one of the hallmarks of the most-subscribed expansion, so)
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Is there a good addon for replacing zeroes with a k that someone can recommend?
MSBT I'm pretty sure will do this, but I haven't used it in a long time
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
MSBT is annoying, though, because as far as I can tell there's no way to keep combat text above enemies' heads. It always has to go in the MSBT frames.
I don't understand why we can't have 5 ilvl jumps between difficulties instead of 15. Why do we need 15?
They've said it's because then people won't be incentivized to clear new content (i.e. new raids) because the drops are only incrementally better than what they have. I think it's a load of shit. They created this exponential progression because they thought it was a "good design practice."
I also agree that you can most definitely pace patches better by doing a better job of splitting up the content. You don't need two raids at release just because you had two at release the last 3 expansions. Also, since Wrath, the mid-level tier of raids/dungeons has gotten the least amount of exposure/playtime. They really need to fix this problem.
And for whatever it's worth, I feel they should add more single-boss raids like all the ones in Wrath (they could even act like a half-tier for gear). Sure, world bosses were supposed to fill this niche, but those raids were so goddamned fun, even when you outgeared the place.
You know, I'm actually glad ToC came out, our guild was struggling with ulduar for some reason. But we blasted through ony, ToC, and wrath (struggling on Lich king and The professor).
If they hadn't, we would've been locked out of raid content because we couldn't quite nail 100% of the mechanics in ulduar.
Wrath was the epitome of the perfect wow in my eyes. Vanilla was horrible and grindy. BC was samey, but improved it a bit. And it felt like everything went downhill after Wrath. Cata was 'meh' to me, I stopped playing after BWD (plus the guild fell apart because of a manipulative douche "friend" who was lying about everyone).
It just felt like there was a lot I could do. The whole "you have to play X a week, but only up to Y a day" type nonsense wasn't there. The gating mechanisms bother me. If I want to go grind out 1000 badges in a day for my alts to get shit, let me.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Normal Foundry is the same item level as Heroic Highmaul, not Mythic.
Mythic Highmaul is the same item level as Heroic Foundry.
Its just a 15 point difference between the same difficulties of the raids.
Due to HFC scaling throughout its own difficulties, you can get LFR Gear that is the same item level as Blackrock Foundry Heroic and only 5 item levels lower than Normal HFC.
The LFR gear in Highmaul was the same level you would get out of a heroic and that was insulting
@Bobble Not a damn thing. It was the usual social media hype crap, an announcement for an announcement. They've not even stepped foot onto the Blizzard campus yet.
Normal Foundry is the same item level as Heroic Highmaul, not Mythic.
Mythic Highmaul is the same item level as Heroic Foundry.
Its just a 15 point difference between the same difficulties of the raids.
Due to HFC scaling throughout its own difficulties, you can get LFR Gear that is the same item level as Blackrock Foundry Heroic and only 5 item levels lower than Normal HFC.
The LFR gear in Highmaul was the same level you would get out of a heroic and that was insulting
What really irked me was the LFR armor all looked like dungeon blues / greens. It was atrocious looking.
Seeing how it is done in another game, where the LFR equivalent gear is some of the coolest looking gear (and the reason lots of people with better gear run the content), the decision in WoD to make the LFR gear look really bad boggles my mind. Don't the developers want the broadest cross-section of the game's population engaging in the LFR content, since it is the most accessible? If they are looking at using it as a stepping stone to more difficult content, they should encourage having people with the experience help mentor/lead the LFR raids.
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drunkenpandarenSlapping all the goblin hamIn the top laneRegistered Userregular
I really like how FFXIV deals with catch up gear (CT, Void Ark) and keeping older raids a bit relevant through out the expansion.
I really like how FFXIV deals with catch up gear (CT, Void Ark) and keeping older raids a bit relevant through out the expansion.
I think they hit upon the ideal way to keep content relevant. Constantly add reasons to go back into previous dungeons/raids. Even something as minor as collectables, mounts, or cosmetic gear goes a long way. In the case of FFXIV they are notorious for putting current Relic progression steps in older content to keep people going there and keep queue times for newer players lower. They added a weekly reward for an item you need to upgrade your relic to the old Crystal Tower raids, and that's content that is over a year old.
Basically you can get the second best weapon for your Job by running year old content (granted there is a MAJOR time investment in getting to that point on your relic).
NNID: delphinidaes Official PA Forums FFXIV:ARR Free Company <GHOST> gitl.enjin.com Join us on Sargatanas!
I really like how FFXIV deals with catch up gear (CT, Void Ark) and keeping older raids a bit relevant through out the expansion.
I think they hit upon the ideal way to keep content relevant. Constantly add reasons to go back into previous dungeons/raids. Even something as minor as collectables, mounts, or cosmetic gear goes a long way. In the case of FFXIV they are notorious for putting current Relic progression steps in older content to keep people going there and keep queue times for newer players lower. They added a weekly reward for an item you need to upgrade your relic to the old Crystal Tower raids, and that's content that is over a year old.
Basically you can get the second best weapon for your Job by running year old content (granted there is a MAJOR time investment in getting to that point on your relic).
That could work for wow, provided they release content more regularly. Say for example to do a part of the legendary ring in WoD, you go into HFC and get the books, but then there is another step after to go back and do highmaul. People would be super pissed because they already farmed the crap out of it, and there really hasn't been enough content in between to make people think "oh I haven't done that in a while".
I guess I'm weird in that I don't care as much about keeping rigidly structured raid progression, and care more about interesting world content. There hasn't been much of it over the years, but what has been done has pretty much been universally liked. 5.1 stuff with Dominance Offensive/whatever the Alliance one is called, Isle of Quel'Danas, and some of the pre-expansion events have been pretty well done. I want to see more of that.
the reason the ilvl jump between tiers is so large is the number of difficulties that exist now; LFR/normal/heroic/mythic all have to be stepwise improvements. You also need space for warforged stuff, and so on.
I kinda like the idea of just having mythic automatically drop heroic warforged stuff rather than a whole new ilvl of gear (and probably more vanity rewards or something), but that might cause people to get bored quickly.
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I'd prefer more interesting things where you can interact with people in non-instanced ways, but blizzard just seems to hate anything that isn't instanced. The best gear and mounts and rewards all still come from hardcore raiding, and to a lesser extent arenas and their mounts/gear. I have no problem with their rewards, because you have to generally be skilled in some way to make it happen. But there are other people who just want to do what they like, and no matter how much time they put into what they liked doing, they will never get toys as cool as those who raid. World content that doesn't reward time invested is what falls flat on its face. Tanaan is just a catch up mechanic, all you get from time invested are a couple of mounts. There is no gear or other character progression there. Sunwell isle and the dominance offensive stuff both had epics and other little toys you could use, so people didn't mind actually doing them. If tanaan didn't give flying, people wouldn't do it aside from getting some cursory gear for a fresh 100, killing the 4 rares for mounts, and killing kazzak to sell the felblight.
Normal Foundry is the same item level as Heroic Highmaul, not Mythic.
Mythic Highmaul is the same item level as Heroic Foundry.
Its just a 15 point difference between the same difficulties of the raids.
Due to HFC scaling throughout its own difficulties, you can get LFR Gear that is the same item level as Blackrock Foundry Heroic and only 5 item levels lower than Normal HFC.
The LFR gear in Highmaul was the same level you would get out of a heroic and that was insulting
No it wasn't. Highmaul LFR was 640, with Highmaul Normal being 655, but actually tuned for people wearing 630s. So Highmaul LFR gear actually gave you more of an edge than the Normal instance intended for you to have.
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drunkenpandarenSlapping all the goblin hamIn the top laneRegistered Userregular
I really like how FFXIV deals with catch up gear (CT, Void Ark) and keeping older raids a bit relevant through out the expansion.
I think they hit upon the ideal way to keep content relevant. Constantly add reasons to go back into previous dungeons/raids. Even something as minor as collectables, mounts, or cosmetic gear goes a long way. In the case of FFXIV they are notorious for putting current Relic progression steps in older content to keep people going there and keep queue times for newer players lower. They added a weekly reward for an item you need to upgrade your relic to the old Crystal Tower raids, and that's content that is over a year old.
Basically you can get the second best weapon for your Job by running year old content (granted there is a MAJOR time investment in getting to that point on your relic).
That could work for wow, provided they release content more regularly. Say for example to do a part of the legendary ring in WoD, you go into HFC and get the books, but then there is another step after to go back and do highmaul. People would be super pissed because they already farmed the crap out of it, and there really hasn't been enough content in between to make people think "oh I haven't done that in a while".
If they were doing it for WoD they'd be pulling stuff from Pandaria, not from WoD.
the reason the ilvl jump between tiers is so large is the number of difficulties that exist now; LFR/normal/heroic/mythic all have to be stepwise improvements. You also need space for warforged stuff, and so on.
I kinda like the idea of just having mythic automatically drop heroic warforged stuff rather than a whole new ilvl of gear (and probably more vanity rewards or something), but that might cause people to get bored quickly.
It's that plus the stat bloat. As the numbers get higher and higher, 1 level means less and less, so you have to increase amounts by more and more to keep the same relative growth rate in effectiveness. Which is just unfortunately a product of how long the game has been designed and there isn't really any true, easy solution. There's a blog post about their decision to go for the pre-WoD squish, and the alternatives they also considered that's definitely worth reading.
What they need to do is make all max level gear from one expansion be the same ilvl and match that ilvl to the gear dropped in the starting areas of the next expansion. Doing that will eliminate the exponential gulfs caused by raids as well as smooth out the levelling gear curve.
the reason the ilvl jump between tiers is so large is the number of difficulties that exist now; LFR/normal/heroic/mythic all have to be stepwise improvements. You also need space for warforged stuff, and so on.
I kinda like the idea of just having mythic automatically drop heroic warforged stuff rather than a whole new ilvl of gear (and probably more vanity rewards or something), but that might cause people to get bored quickly.
It's that plus the stat bloat. As the numbers get higher and higher, 1 level means less and less, so you have to increase amounts by more and more to keep the same relative growth rate in effectiveness. Which is just unfortunately a product of how long the game has been designed and there isn't really any true, easy solution. There's a blog post about their decision to go for the pre-WoD squish, and the alternatives they also considered that's definitely worth reading.
Stat bloat is built into ilevel. A 1 ilevel increase should represent the same % increase in power no matter what the starting ilevel is (which is why higher ilevels lead to such ridiculous damage numbers). ilevel itself is fine, and it works pretty well. It's really just that there are too many difficulty tiers that need incrementally more powerful gear, with increments that are large enough that the player feels like they're being rewarded.
I have the unpopular opinion that they need to remove all the different difficulty modes (or cut it down to just a 'normal' and 'hard' mode).
Regarding catch up mechanics: I feel like there should be catch up mechanics in place. Coming into the game late, or wanting to switch characters shouldn't be a punishing experience. I also think that they shouldn't mothball old content as quickly. I think a good compromise would be to keep both the current raid tier, and the next most recent raid tier as relevant. The catch up mechanics should reward gear that is good enough to get you into the second most recent raid, and they should put things into the second most recent raid to incentivise the more cutting edge guilds into going back into them. They should try to release raids that are a little bit smaller (8 to 10 bosses instead of 14), but maybe release one or two extras over the course of the xpac.
To incentivize guilds into going back to old content, I think that putting crafting materials into the 'old' raid when the new one drops that professions can use to make max tier gear would be a good idea. There should be one or two pieces for each spec where crafted gear is BIS due to itemization. This could give crafters something to do for once too!
What they need to do is make all max level gear from one expansion be the same ilvl and match that ilvl to the gear dropped in the starting areas of the next expansion. Doing that will eliminate the exponential gulfs caused by raids as well as smooth out the levelling gear curve.
That would cause severe stat and item level inflation.
I should be using my 745s for 90% of my leveling experience in Legion.
They should be using their scaling technology to deal with the number inflation. If old content is old and can be solod, then make the obsolete content the same ilvl. Would it truly matter if today BWL and Blackrock Descent dropped the same ilvl gear? They could effectively make it so from lvl 1-100 you get items with ilvl about equal to your level. Then once you have say an average ilvl of 110, when you go into old content you get the damage boost equivalent to whatever it is today. Then you can have smaller increments between tiers just because it takes less to keep the ratio of increase similar. Once legion comes out, everything in WoD is squished to a max of 110 and Legion max level starts at say 120ilvl .
There really isn't a big reason to need raid gear to retain its ilvl once an expansion is over. There are very few people that level new characters and do the raids at the appropriate level. With changes to stats and classes every expansion, the fights arent even the same as they were when they were current.
Keeping the numbers low helps reduce the need for insane gaps between tiers in order to feel more powerful. I think there should only be 2 difficulties as well which is basically normal, which would be somewhere between lfr and normal now. And Brutal, which would be like mythic with the extra mechanics. The name change would reflect that it is the mode that is going to mess your shit up. That way people can progress through one mode, and if they truly want to progress they are going to earn it by getting crapped on by the hard version. I think the same ilvl gear should drop for both to allow everyone to participate in everything, but the hard mode should have cool toys/mounts/achievements/crafting recipes/mats to earn.
If pvp can get everyone fighting on the same level playing field, I fail to see why everyone can't be on a more similar playing field in pve. The special snowflake status would still be there with the unique toys, but people wouldn't be locked out of content because they haven't been able to grind up through 3 difficulties of a raid.
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
yeah three "real" raiding difficulties is too many
Just have Heroic and Mythic, and make LFR a bit harder to satisfy the itch of people who can't get organised enough for heroic. MoP levels of LFR difficulty would be perfect. Boom, done.
What they need to do is make all max level gear from one expansion be the same ilvl and match that ilvl to the gear dropped in the starting areas of the next expansion. Doing that will eliminate the exponential gulfs caused by raids as well as smooth out the levelling gear curve.
That would cause severe stat and item level inflation.
I should be using my 745s for 90% of my leveling experience in Legion.
How would that cause stat and item level inflation? It's designed to do the opposite and deflate stats by way of compressing the ilvl curve. Let's say (using not real numbers) they cap Vanilla gear at ilvl 60, then they cap TBC gear at ilvl 100, then Wrath at 140, Cata at 180, and Panda at 220. This means WoD starting gear is at 220 ilvl, effectively dropping 260 ilvls from the curve. Your 745s (now 485s) would still be appreciably more powerful than the 660s (now 400s) of Legion starting gear since WoD wouldn't be compressed. It also means people levelling without heirlooms aren't quite as fucked by the levelling speed since the smaller ilvl difference leads to gear lasting longer.
Because instead of the final raid tier difficulty overlapping with the majority of the questing gear, the questing gear starts at the high end of mythic. So you start out leveling in Legion with 735s being dropped and just go up from there instead of starting out at like 650 and ending up at 740 at level 110.
Viskod on
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited May 2016
bleeding edge raid gear from the previous expansion has always lasted you up to and often significantly into max level. Most of our raid was still wearing 90%+ tier 6-level gear when we killed Kel'Thuzad in Naxx.
Every expansion Blizz goes back and forth on that. Sometimes you roll into first raid having replaced nothing if you were BIS and sometimes you replace everything halfway up leveling even though you were BIS. We have had both extremes and multiple points in between. And usually it's an overreaction to whatever they did the last time before that.
Expansion to expansion ilevel bloat doesn't matter much, I don't think, because they can just squish ilevels for old content. IIRC they said when they did the squish for WoD they built it in a way that lets them just fiddle a dial to adjust again in the future.
Expansion to expansion ilevel bloat doesn't matter much, I don't think, because they can just squish ilevels for old content. IIRC they said when they did the squish for WoD they built it in a way that lets them just fiddle a dial to adjust again in the future.
Well they need to dial it down a lot. The ilvl bloat in just WoD alone is pretty crazy, and that was the expansion that they did the squish for. The legion numbers look insanely high right now. I don't need my characters to be super saiyans that achieve new levels every expansion.
Expansion to expansion ilevel bloat doesn't matter much, I don't think, because they can just squish ilevels for old content. IIRC they said when they did the squish for WoD they built it in a way that lets them just fiddle a dial to adjust again in the future.
Well they need to dial it down a lot. The ilvl bloat in just WoD alone is pretty crazy, and that was the expansion that they did the squish for. The legion numbers look insanely high right now. I don't need my characters to be super saiyans that achieve new levels every expansion.
That's because we've seen an ilevel increase of nearly 200 in WoD alone. They do need to squish again, I think.
I think my biggest complaint with ilvl is legendary gear. If you put the time and effort into getting something, you should be able to use that for a long time.
Like the ring from WoD isn't even very good stats wise, and its still going to be trivialized incredibly quickly considering how much time you had to spend getting that thing to max.
"Here is the most powerful item ever created!"
*week later*
"Oh yeah that thing is crap, check out this thing I pulled out of a rats gut."
Legendary items must be invalidated by the next expansion, because otherwise you are actively saying that in order to be BiS you have to go do content from the last expansion that no one is doing anymore.
The people who care about BiS, would have done it anyway. Not to mention they like to twilight legendaries so you can't go back and get them.
They also don't have to be higher ilvl, they can be same ilvl. Having a legendary just means you don't have to look for an upgrade for that slot, you just get it from the months of effort you already put in.
People didn't like the BRD style back in Vanilla. Groups would piss and moan about what oath to take, because your Druid wants to get his key but this guy needs to do Onyxia attunement or only two people want to even bother with Emperor. The problem with nonlinear dungeons is that it creates a lot of conflict in pugs. It also means LFD would have to die because Jane Nofreetime has different expectations than Johnny Poopsock who intends to take 90 minutes to clear out the whole place. This doesn't even get into the resources for art, boss design, and so on that something like BRD takes. I believe devs said that it was on par with building a capital city.
Basically whoever wrote that fails to understand that even ten-year-olds playing WoW in 2004 are now twenty-year-olds with jobs, classes, and increasing responsibilities. The game has grown up with its players, and besides that I'm not getting misty-eyed over blackrock fucking depths. It sucked and I'm glad it's dead.
EDIT: The clincher? The most popular dungeon in Vanilla: Scarlet Monastery. Originally intended to be one massive dungeon, it was chopped up into linear wings to be ready in time for launch. The appeal of SM would serve as the template for dungeons in TBC and basically all future expansions. The writer doesn't have a clue.
Sterica on
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Conversely, one of my fondest memories in vanilla is getting together with a friend and putting together a BRD group to finally clear the whole thing.
The feeling of satisfaction of clearing that dungeon for the first time is unmatched by anything else I've ever done in WoW since, and the only reason it was so satisfying was because it was so frustrating to accomplish.
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this is kinda silly reasoning though, imo
like, if you look at the graph of subs vs. time that everyone likes to always post, what you'll see is a peak during wrath and a steady decline from there, punctuated by spikes are the start of every expansion. You can conclude on that basis that what people have always really wanted is the BC model, warts and all... or you can conclude that the game's just old and most of its potential players have at some point tried it and since lost interest.
I also don't buy that it's some kind of problem that people move up to the current raid when it actually releases (also the 'most damaging' thing was one of the hallmarks of the most-subscribed expansion, so)
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
MSBT I'm pretty sure will do this, but I haven't used it in a long time
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
They've said it's because then people won't be incentivized to clear new content (i.e. new raids) because the drops are only incrementally better than what they have. I think it's a load of shit. They created this exponential progression because they thought it was a "good design practice."
I also agree that you can most definitely pace patches better by doing a better job of splitting up the content. You don't need two raids at release just because you had two at release the last 3 expansions. Also, since Wrath, the mid-level tier of raids/dungeons has gotten the least amount of exposure/playtime. They really need to fix this problem.
And for whatever it's worth, I feel they should add more single-boss raids like all the ones in Wrath (they could even act like a half-tier for gear). Sure, world bosses were supposed to fill this niche, but those raids were so goddamned fun, even when you outgeared the place.
If they hadn't, we would've been locked out of raid content because we couldn't quite nail 100% of the mechanics in ulduar.
Wrath was the epitome of the perfect wow in my eyes. Vanilla was horrible and grindy. BC was samey, but improved it a bit. And it felt like everything went downhill after Wrath. Cata was 'meh' to me, I stopped playing after BWD (plus the guild fell apart because of a manipulative douche "friend" who was lying about everyone).
It just felt like there was a lot I could do. The whole "you have to play X a week, but only up to Y a day" type nonsense wasn't there. The gating mechanisms bother me. If I want to go grind out 1000 badges in a day for my alts to get shit, let me.
The LFR gear in Highmaul was the same level you would get out of a heroic and that was insulting
Did anything ever come of this?
What really irked me was the LFR armor all looked like dungeon blues / greens. It was atrocious looking.
Steam: pandas_gota_gun
I think they hit upon the ideal way to keep content relevant. Constantly add reasons to go back into previous dungeons/raids. Even something as minor as collectables, mounts, or cosmetic gear goes a long way. In the case of FFXIV they are notorious for putting current Relic progression steps in older content to keep people going there and keep queue times for newer players lower. They added a weekly reward for an item you need to upgrade your relic to the old Crystal Tower raids, and that's content that is over a year old.
Basically you can get the second best weapon for your Job by running year old content (granted there is a MAJOR time investment in getting to that point on your relic).
Official PA Forums FFXIV:ARR Free Company <GHOST> gitl.enjin.com Join us on Sargatanas!
This, along with not keeping a bag for the follower upgrade items.
That could work for wow, provided they release content more regularly. Say for example to do a part of the legendary ring in WoD, you go into HFC and get the books, but then there is another step after to go back and do highmaul. People would be super pissed because they already farmed the crap out of it, and there really hasn't been enough content in between to make people think "oh I haven't done that in a while".
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
I kinda like the idea of just having mythic automatically drop heroic warforged stuff rather than a whole new ilvl of gear (and probably more vanity rewards or something), but that might cause people to get bored quickly.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
No it wasn't. Highmaul LFR was 640, with Highmaul Normal being 655, but actually tuned for people wearing 630s. So Highmaul LFR gear actually gave you more of an edge than the Normal instance intended for you to have.
If they were doing it for WoD they'd be pulling stuff from Pandaria, not from WoD.
Steam: pandas_gota_gun
It's that plus the stat bloat. As the numbers get higher and higher, 1 level means less and less, so you have to increase amounts by more and more to keep the same relative growth rate in effectiveness. Which is just unfortunately a product of how long the game has been designed and there isn't really any true, easy solution. There's a blog post about their decision to go for the pre-WoD squish, and the alternatives they also considered that's definitely worth reading.
Stat bloat is built into ilevel. A 1 ilevel increase should represent the same % increase in power no matter what the starting ilevel is (which is why higher ilevels lead to such ridiculous damage numbers). ilevel itself is fine, and it works pretty well. It's really just that there are too many difficulty tiers that need incrementally more powerful gear, with increments that are large enough that the player feels like they're being rewarded.
I have the unpopular opinion that they need to remove all the different difficulty modes (or cut it down to just a 'normal' and 'hard' mode).
Regarding catch up mechanics: I feel like there should be catch up mechanics in place. Coming into the game late, or wanting to switch characters shouldn't be a punishing experience. I also think that they shouldn't mothball old content as quickly. I think a good compromise would be to keep both the current raid tier, and the next most recent raid tier as relevant. The catch up mechanics should reward gear that is good enough to get you into the second most recent raid, and they should put things into the second most recent raid to incentivise the more cutting edge guilds into going back into them. They should try to release raids that are a little bit smaller (8 to 10 bosses instead of 14), but maybe release one or two extras over the course of the xpac.
To incentivize guilds into going back to old content, I think that putting crafting materials into the 'old' raid when the new one drops that professions can use to make max tier gear would be a good idea. There should be one or two pieces for each spec where crafted gear is BIS due to itemization. This could give crafters something to do for once too!
That would cause severe stat and item level inflation.
I should be using my 745s for 90% of my leveling experience in Legion.
There really isn't a big reason to need raid gear to retain its ilvl once an expansion is over. There are very few people that level new characters and do the raids at the appropriate level. With changes to stats and classes every expansion, the fights arent even the same as they were when they were current.
Keeping the numbers low helps reduce the need for insane gaps between tiers in order to feel more powerful. I think there should only be 2 difficulties as well which is basically normal, which would be somewhere between lfr and normal now. And Brutal, which would be like mythic with the extra mechanics. The name change would reflect that it is the mode that is going to mess your shit up. That way people can progress through one mode, and if they truly want to progress they are going to earn it by getting crapped on by the hard version. I think the same ilvl gear should drop for both to allow everyone to participate in everything, but the hard mode should have cool toys/mounts/achievements/crafting recipes/mats to earn.
If pvp can get everyone fighting on the same level playing field, I fail to see why everyone can't be on a more similar playing field in pve. The special snowflake status would still be there with the unique toys, but people wouldn't be locked out of content because they haven't been able to grind up through 3 difficulties of a raid.
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Just have Heroic and Mythic, and make LFR a bit harder to satisfy the itch of people who can't get organised enough for heroic. MoP levels of LFR difficulty would be perfect. Boom, done.
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Well they need to dial it down a lot. The ilvl bloat in just WoD alone is pretty crazy, and that was the expansion that they did the squish for. The legion numbers look insanely high right now. I don't need my characters to be super saiyans that achieve new levels every expansion.
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That's because we've seen an ilevel increase of nearly 200 in WoD alone. They do need to squish again, I think.
Like the ring from WoD isn't even very good stats wise, and its still going to be trivialized incredibly quickly considering how much time you had to spend getting that thing to max.
"Here is the most powerful item ever created!"
*week later*
"Oh yeah that thing is crap, check out this thing I pulled out of a rats gut."
They also don't have to be higher ilvl, they can be same ilvl. Having a legendary just means you don't have to look for an upgrade for that slot, you just get it from the months of effort you already put in.
Basically whoever wrote that fails to understand that even ten-year-olds playing WoW in 2004 are now twenty-year-olds with jobs, classes, and increasing responsibilities. The game has grown up with its players, and besides that I'm not getting misty-eyed over blackrock fucking depths. It sucked and I'm glad it's dead.
EDIT: The clincher? The most popular dungeon in Vanilla: Scarlet Monastery. Originally intended to be one massive dungeon, it was chopped up into linear wings to be ready in time for launch. The appeal of SM would serve as the template for dungeons in TBC and basically all future expansions. The writer doesn't have a clue.
The feeling of satisfaction of clearing that dungeon for the first time is unmatched by anything else I've ever done in WoW since, and the only reason it was so satisfying was because it was so frustrating to accomplish.